


And Fancy Free

by nagi_schwarz



Series: The Oppenheimer Effect [71]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 09:19:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10383384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Any, Any,Movin' right along / Footloose and fancy-free / Getting there is half the fun, come share it with me- (Alkaline Trio, Muppet remake)"Fun times in DC after the funeral.





	

Evan, in true Evan fashion, had their touristy days in DC planned to a T, but not in the kind of overly-controlling, tour-guide kind of way that had always driven Tyler crazy on field trips at school. He’d planned out the most efficient route to see everything they wanted to see, but they could spend as much or as little time at any stop along the way. Evan also had a camera, and he insisted on a photo shoot at pretty much every monument they went to.  
  
They saw all the big touristy ones - the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial (where JD could recite the Gettysburg Address, because he was old-fashioned that way). They went to the Air Force Memorial, which Tyler hadn’t even known existed. He’d seen the Vietnam Memorial and the Marine Memorial in textbooks, but never the Air Force one. Given that JD, Evan, Cam, and John had all served with the Air Force, it made sense that they went to see it. At the military memorials, the three men were quiet, respectful, and Tyler hung behind Cam’s wheelchair, watching and listening and taking cues from them.   
  
They traded stories of their fallen comrades, not how they’d died but how they’d lived, the strange and funny and brave things they’d done. JD had commanded Marines with the Stargate Program. Everyone in Cam’s 302 squadron had died in the Battle of Antarctica. Evan had served alongside Marines and Airmen alike. His father had served in Vietnam.  
  
JD hadn’t been kidding about the White House. It was much smaller in person than it seemed on TV. And TV never showed guards pacing the roof with their assault weapons. Tyler peered through the wrought iron fence at the white squirrels on the lawn, fascinated. Were they old squirrels? Were they albino squirrels? He took a few selfies with the white squirrels in the background to send to Brenda. Cam and Evan asked if Tyler wanted to take a tour of the inside of the White House, but Tyler wasn’t much interested in seeing boring furniture and paintings.   
  
Besides, where Tyler really wanted to go was the Smithsonian. He’d always wanted to go to the Air and Space Museum. Cam, because he was kinda conservative and old-fashioned in some ways (even more than JD), wanted to go to the American History Museum. And Evan - he wanted to go to the Art Museum. There were other museums besides those ones in the Smithsonian, but those were the ones they wanted to see.   
  
They’d spent all morning going to monuments and things, so they had lunch at a sidewalk cafe, and then headed for the Art Museum.  
  
Tyler had taken both Art and Physics from Evan at school, so he knew Evan was into art on top of being a really good artist. He’d never realized just how much Evan knew about art, though. Not just the colors and the techniques and the movements in history, but the artists themselves. Their names and their histories and their lives. The way his eyes lit up when he explained to Cam about one of his favorite paintings was the same way Cam lit up when he talked about a really cool car or jet. Tyler hovered at Evan’s elbow, listening and wondering how he could remember so much stuff and not have his head explode.  
  
They spent hours in the museum, looking at some cool stuff but also some really strange stuff that Tyler wasn’t entirely sure counted as art. Evan admitted that he had pretty old-fashioned taste in art, that his mother had trained him in the classics, but he said he could appreciate that people saw the world in different ways, and the way they saw the world was evident in their art. Sometimes, he said, what made art wasn’t the way it looked, but the way it made you feel, or for some artists, the way it made them feel while they created.   
  
“I don’t get you,” JD said, when they finally departed from the art museum, feet sore and heads spinning with information. “But you’re really cute when you get all nerdy like that.” He leaned in and kissed Evan softly on the mouth, and Evan smiled into the kiss.

“It is really adorable,” Cam agreed. He patted Evan’s hip. Then he nudged Tyler with his elbow. “How are you holding up, kid? Feeling more cultured and knowledgeable about your country?”  
  
“Uh, sure,” Tyler said, blinking.  
  
Cam laughed. “I think we broke his brain. Let’s go get some junk food, and then we should swing back by the Lincoln Memorial so you can see how it’s all lit up at night.”  
  
“Pizza?” JD asked.  
  
“With breadsticks?” Tyler added.  
  
Evan rolled his eyes. “Teenagers.”  
  
JD kissed him again, less softly. “You know you like it.”  
  
It was Tyler’s turn to roll his eyes. “Urgh. For reals. Get a room.”  
  
Evan laughed into JD’s mouth. “You might have to take a long walk after dinner tonight, son. Want some money to go see a movie?”  
  
They were sharing a motel room to save on costs.  
  
Tyler fought back a blush. “Sure.” It was their vacation too.  
  
The next day, at the American History Museum, JD spoke quietly about all the things he remembered. He’d been born in 1952, and so he remembered the cool old cars, the poodle skirts and dances. He remembered the first time he went to Disneyland and McDonald’s. He remembered where he was when Kennedy was assassinated, and when the Vietnam War started, and when Nixon resigned. He remembered the Cuban Missile Crisis, and when the Berlin Wall came down. He remembered the Gulf War, had served in it. Cam and Evan listened intently as JD shared his experiences, their expressions somber and occasionally amused.  
  
“The scandal, when miniskirts first became a thing,” JD said. “You should’ve heard the things my mother said.”  
  
Cam told Tyler about growing up on a farm, and Evan told Tyler about growing up on the commune.  
  
Cam, JD, and Evan all came alive when they went to the Air and Space Museum. They were less than interested in space, since they knew much more about space than anyone running the museum did. But they were all much adoring of the air. They talked in dreamy tones of all the different craft they’d flown, and some of the ones they wished they could fly. JD, who’d gotten his masters in aeronautical engineering, described in giddy detail the genius that went into the different types of engine and wing designs.  
  
All three men talked about how dog fights had been in WWI and WWII, and how stealth bombers and fighter planes in the modern age were so much faster, so much more sophisticated.  
  
“I think you had to be a better pilot back then,” JD said. “Had to rely on your own senses and instincts, because you didn’t have instruments telling you things like closing distances and target locks.”  
  
“The planes were so much slower,” Cam said.  
  
“Yeah, but the things they could do in them.” JD shook his head. He nudged Evan. “How come you went cargo?”  
  
“Never wanted to be combat,” Evan said. “You know me. I like my life steady and dependable. I got my 302 wings because, well, every pilot got them in the Program. But apart from training flights, I never went into combat with them.”  
  
“A lot of nuggets did better than aces,” Cam said. “They handled so differently. Hard for a lot of guys and gals to unlearn what they knew.” He nudged JD. “You were a test pilot. What was the coolest test craft you ever got to fly?”  
  
“Before the 302? The Blackbird, hands down.” JD smiled dreamily again.  
  
When they came upon the Blackbird on display, all three men gazed up at it in silent awe.  
  
Tyler didn’t think it looked very cool. It was black and flat and...weird. Like a giant metal stingray. “You need me to give you fellas some time alone?” he asked. “Or should I be hitting up a jewelry store so you all can propose?”  
  
“Have some respect, whippersnapper,” JD said in mock-indignation. “This is one of the finest pieces of purely human engineering on the planet.”  
  
“She is beautiful.” Cam sighed.  
  
Tyler tilted his head back to try to get a better angle. “Why is everything a ‘she’?”  
  
“That’s just the way it is.” Cam clapped him on the shoulder.  
  
Evan tugged his camera out of his bag. Even though Tyler was content to take pictures on his phone, Evan had a fancy digital camera that he used to take super nice pictures. “If there’s any one craft we need a photo with, it’s this one. Gather round.”  
  
“Want me to take it?” Tyler asked. “Since you three are all so in love with Lady Blackbird.”

Evan scanned the crowd. He liked all of them to be in as many pictures as possible. “Go see if someone will take one for us. How about those two ladies over there?”  
  
Tyler followed his gaze. He wasn’t much fond of talking to strangers, something the men were trying to teach him to be better at. He sighed and took the camera, trotted over to the two ladies.  
  
“Ma’am, would you be willing to take a picture of me and my dads?”  
  
The one lady with the curly blonde hair raised her eyebrows. “Your dads?”  
  
Tyler realized what he’d said. “Yeah.” He swallowed hard, jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Over there.”  
  
The lady peered past him. “You mean with the guy in the wheelchair?”  
  
“That’s right.”  
  
The second lady - taller, with black hair and a sharp nose - eyed him up and down. “You adopted?”  
  
“Yeah,” Tyler said, and amended it to, “I mean, yes, ma’am. I mean, the man in the wheelchair, he’s my legal dad, but -”  
  
“The other guy is also your dad?” The first lady raised her eyebrows.  
  
Tyler licked his lips nervously. “All three of them. They’re my dads.”  
  
The second lady’s expression softened. “You don’t usually tell people that, do you?”  
  
Tyler hunched his shoulders a bit, then remembered Cam’s lessons about standing tall and straightened up. “People are weird enough about just two of them. They don’t understand all three. But - we’re far from home. No one will recognize us. And we’re a family. We’re on vacation. Vacations are about freedom, right?”  
  
“That they are,” the first lady said. She held her hand out. “Sure, we’ll take your picture. Go, stand with your dads.”  
  
Tyler handed her the camera. “Thanks. Um, just press this button here -”  
  
“I’m a professional photographer.” The first lady smiled. “I think I can figure it out. One of your dads has nice taste in cameras.”  
  
“Evan’s an art teacher,” Tyler said. He turned and trotted back to the others, the ladies following along.  
  
Evan arranged them neatly, the three of them around Cam’s chair. The ladies encouraged them to smile, the first one snapping away while the second one smiled at them.   
  
Evan thanked them profusely when they handed the camera back. Both women ruffled Tyler’s hair before they walked away.  
  
JD whistled. “Looks like you’ve got some admirers, Tyler, you little lady killer.”  
  
“Maybe not so much a lady killer,” Evan said, lifting his chin at the two women. They’d joined hands as they walked away.  
  
Cam raised his eyebrows at Tyler. “What did you say to them?”  
  
“I told them you were my dads.”  
  
“All of us?” Evan’s hands on his cameras stilled.  
  
Tyler affected the most nonchalance he could. “Yeah.”  
  
They stared at him.   
  
“Well, you are, aren’t you?”  
  
Cam yanked Tyler into a hug. Evan and JD knelt, joined in, all of them squeezing him so tight he could barely breathe.  
  
JD was the first to pull back, swiping a hand over his face suspiciously.  
  
“So - food,” he said. “We should get food before we hit the road.”  
  
“Yeah,” Evan agreed. “Food.”  
  
As they rolled out into the sunlight, Cam asked, “So, while we’re footloose and fancy free in DC, is there anything else you want to see?”  
  
Tyler pondered. “Nah. I think I’ve seen enough. I’ve heard about the world’s largest ball of twine, though. Always wanted to see it.”  
  
“It’s in Kansas, on the way to my parents’ place,” Cam said. “We can do that.”  
  
“No rush, though,” JD said. “The thing about road trips is that getting there is half the fun.”  
  
“No rush.” Cam nodded and reached up, laced his fingers through JD’s. Evan reached out, held JD’s other hand.  
  
Tyler walked along beside them and knew everything was all right in his world.


End file.
